conversation

It’s a rainy January day in the San Francisco and I’m in the Porter Novelli offices, sitting across from Jenova Chen, co-founder of Thatgamecompany. He has a cough but he swears he’s not contagious. Quite frankly, I don’t mind much. Nowadays, everyone has the sniffles. It is flu season after all.

Chen is a wunderkind of sorts when it comes to gaming. At 27, he’s running his own studio and has a three-game publishing deal with Sony. He’s here to show me the second of those games — Flower.

Like every title from Thatgamecompany, this is a project that stands out from a rambunctious crowd. If the GameStop were a classroom, most of the games would be a riot of unruly boys, mugging for the camera, screaming for attention. On the other hand, Thatgamecompany projects would be that quiet student, sitting in the corner, staring out the window.

While its peers concentrate on brash ad loud experiences that concentrate on cool and fun, Chen and his team want to convey other emotions, other feelings. It’s that willingness to do something different and take risks that separate it from developers like Treyarch and Digital Extremes. Thatgamecompany projects have a distinct tone and that difference makes their other titles — Cloud and flOw — so memorable.

“We want to evoke emotions for adults and females, for everyone,” Chen said. “We want to expand the boundaries of what video games as a medium can communicate. We try really hard to avoid those conventional experiences, these adrenaline rush, anger, competition, violence. We intentionally avoid that. We try to create a game that’s serene and tranquil and filled with love.

“I think someone in this industry needs to make that content. I feel as a game maker, we are responsible to make content that stretch the ruling structure and emotions so that everyone can enjoy. We’re not zen a company.” When he’s referring to zen, he’s talking about the zen gaming, the genre that others are trying to pin his games in. “We aimed for that, but we never thought we would stay there.”